The Cimbri themselves had gone back up the Rhône to central Gaul after destroying Silanus’s legions in 109. But that only opened the door for other tribes to take advantage of the power vacuum. A tribe from modern Switzerland called the Tigurini took advantage of Roman setbacks and moved down out of the mountains. So as the newly elected consul Marius raised legions to go to Numidia in 107, his consular colleague Lucius Cassius Longinus raised legions to go to Gaul. It was this double threat that played a big part in the Senate dropping property requirements for service in the legions. Longinus’s object was to defeat the Tigurini and repair the damage to the Roman reputation for invincibility that the Cimbri had so thoroughly spoiled.14
The Tigurini kept raiding west, however, and Longinus shadowed them all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. The Tigurini were aware the Romans were following them and at an opportune moment they laid a trap. The oblivious Longinus led his men directly into an ambush and died in the ensuing battle. Command of the defeated legions fell to a legate named Gaius Popillius, who, like young Tiberius Gracchus in Spain, was forced to make a life or death decision on behalf of tens of thousands of men. Like Tiberius, Popillius chose life. After promising to hand over half their baggage and pass under the yoke, the battered Romans were allowed to depart.15
Back in Rome this defeat was greeted with the same angry shock that always greeted legions that surrendered. Upon his return to Rome, Popillius was charged with treason. He did not go quietly and snapped back at his accusers, “Now what should I have done when I was surrounded by so great a force of Gauls? Fight? But then our advance would have been with a small band… Remain in camp? But we neither had reinforcements to look for, nor the means to stay alive… Abandon the camp? But we were blocked… Sacrifice the lives of the soldiers? But I thought I had accepted them on the stipulation that so far as possible I should preserve them unharmed for their fatherland and their parents… Reject the enemy’s terms? But the safety of the soldiers has priority over that of the baggage.” The argument fell on deaf ears and Popillius was found guilty and exiled.16
But if there was one thing the Romans had never done, and would never do, it was give up a fight. They certainly did not give back territory they had already won. So even though they seemed to lose every army they sent north, in 106 the Senate dispatched the consul Quintus Servilius Caepio to do something—anything—to salvage the situation. Caepio had long been connected to the Metelli faction through the patronage of the influential optimates Scaurus and Crassus. In most ways Caepio was everything that was wrong with the Senate at the time. He was arrogant, greedy, self-glorifying, and singularly unable to put the Republic’s interests above his own. And at his feet would be laid one of the greatest defeats in the history of the Roman Republic.
Before he left for the north, Caepio took care of some business on the optimates’ behalf. Likely with support from Scaurus, Caepio carried a bill through the Assembly to roll back the power of the Equestrians. Ever since the experience with the Mamilian Commission, the nobles wanted to regain some control over the courts. Caepio’s bill did not return the jury pool exclusively to the Senate but instead split it between senators and Equestrians. Speaking in defense of the bill, Crassus gave one of his most famous addresses, one that Cicero himself studied throughout his life. In it, Crassus called for the Assembly to “deliver us from the jaws of those whose cruelty cannot be satiated even with blood; suffer us not to be slaves to any but yourselves as a people, whom we both can and ought to serve.” The bill passed.17
Arriving in Gaul for a campaign in 106, Caepio finally delivered some good news when he captured the city of Tolosa (modern Toulouse, in southwestern France). We might not know anything about Caepio’s activities were it not for a famous scandal that soon passed into legend. Upon taking the city, Caepio’s men stumbled across an incredible find: 50,000 bars of gold and 10,000 bars of silver. The fortune was soon identified as the missing treasure from a famous Gallic invasion of Greece way back in 279 that, much like the more recent incursions by the Scordisci, ended with the plunder of the Oracle of Delphi. But the sacred treasure had apparently carried with it a curse: “whoever touched a piece of gold from that sack died a wretched and agonizing death.” As the Gauls were driven out of Greece they came to suspect that the tainted treasure was a part of their problem. According to legend, the Gauls dumped most of it in the lakes around Tolosa, but some of it wound up in a temple inside the city. This was the stash that Caepio’s men discovered.18
